Worcester Tech Fest Has Grown To 515 Submissions

SNOW HILL -- On Wednesday, Worcester County celebrated its 39th Annual Technology Festival at Snow Hill Middle School (SHMS), featuring projects from every school and grade level in the county in fields from photography to interactive media to computer-aided design.

According to Tech Fest Chair Sandy Buchanan, the day gives students with a passion for technology a creative outlet and a chance to compete with like-minded individuals.

“We have a lot of creative students and they, of course, get more tech savvy every year,” she said. “This is just to kind of highlight what they come up with.”

There were six different categories of competition this year: Through the Lens, which featured photography; On Screen media presentations; Computer Programming; On Line interactive projects; On Paper, which included signs, posters, and banners; and Through CAD (computer-aided design).

While the principles of the Tech Fest have endured since the beginning, Buchanan admitted that the event has changed significantly with the advances in technology.

“I think originally that it started out as photography,” she said.

When it began the Tech Fest served as a preliminary before a larger state event, according to Buchanan. It has since become a standalone festival with no state connection. That, however, has allowed it to grow and add new events to keep up with the march of technology.

Even in fields that seem a bit stone age, Buchanan explained that tech plays a big part.

“So everything has some kind of technology integration in it, even the photography,” she said.

This year there were 515 submissions from 188 different students in grades Pre-K through 12. Because of the large number of submissions, winners were divided both by category and grade. Buchanan said that she was impressed with the number and the range of projects this year and remarked on how they represent a huge leap forward from some of the early Tech Fest events, where stop-motion photography was considered cutting edge.

“A lot of things have changed,” she said.

Buchanan added that the 188 students making submissions were “a nice, diverse group spread out throughout the county.”

While the Tech Fest no longer leads to a special state competition, Buchanan noted that many schools in the county set up private displays for their winners. There are also outside technology festivals that individual projects can enter.

All projects received a ribbon for participation. Several also were acknowledged as silver ribbon winners.

The top projects in each field won gold ribbons and are as follows listed by project name, student name and school: